


The Woman Who Wasn't There

by epersonae



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Battlewagon racing is awesome, F/F, F/M, Julia Burnsides Lives, Multi, Spoilers for basically everything, Stolen Century, The Forgetting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-23
Updated: 2017-08-30
Packaged: 2018-12-19 05:15:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 5,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11890797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epersonae/pseuds/epersonae
Summary: As if she would let him go to Neverwinter without her.An AU in which Julia lives and joins THB at the Bureau, and in which she also has a past with Magnus and Lucretia before the forgetting.





	1. Before We Forget

**Author's Note:**

> I started with shipping nonsense (THANKS GUYS) and then this turned into something a little deeper. It’s fragmentary because I had two options: start an enormous multi-chapter retelling or do it this way. And there was no way I was going to finish that first option.

They've arranged to meet up in a town perched atop tall spires of rock. 

“You find a good place for yours?”

“I think so. Out of the way. Good people. You?”

“Something like that. I still don't like this plan.”

“Barry and Lup —”

“Say it's the only way. I know. Let's go get a drink.”

They both spot the woman with the long dark hair in the noisy tavern at the same moment. She looks the age that they  _ look _ , and she's easily beating a dude at arm wrestling. She's laughing while she does it, too. 

Magnus whistles appreciatively, and her head turns as she slams the other guy's arm to the table. 

“I'll take you next, big guy,” she shouts. 

“Yeah she will,” says Lucretia in a tone that makes him blush. 

* * *

“My dad's going to kill me if I stay out all night,” says Julia, running a hand through her tangle of curls.

“Just a little longer?” mumbles Magnus into her neck. 

“A few minutes?” whispers Lucretia into her ear. 

* * *

They keep coming back to the town on the spires without telling the others. Getting attached down here feels like cheating. It feels like escapism, like lying about the enormity of what they've done to this world. 

And yet, the three of them tangled in a bed in an inn, eating a picnic under a tree in the sun, talking in a tavern late at night, maybe it feels a bit like love. 

When Lucretia puts her hand in Julia’s, she doesn't think about the dreadful thing her hands have made. When Julia gets up and goes home, and Lucretia has to cast Dimension Door to take her and Magnus back to his room, so no one will know they were gone: every time it's harder to go back. 

* * *

There's no question where she's going to take Magnus. It's almost too easy. Lucretia looks at his sleeping form, crumpled on her floor. 

“You'll have someone who loves you,” she says. “You'll have a place to belong.”

For a self-indulgent moment, she wishes she could forget and go live with them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, if you're interested in a spicy fic set in-between the first two scenes of this chapter, check out [Go Astray](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12104748).


	2. These Few Moments

It's strange sometimes, how easy it was to fall in love with her new neighbor. He's great, and Dad adores him, which helps. But it's faster than seemed normal. 

She guesses that's what love at first sight is, right? It's magic, but for ordinary people like them. 

* * *

Sometimes, it feels like there's an empty space in the bed between them. 

Maybe it is part of the things he has trouble remembering, the nightmares where he wakes up screaming wordlessly. The nights she sleeps restlessly and he thinks he hears a name on her lips, but he can't quite make it out. 

They both live with an uneasy doubt, a shadow too insubstantial to talk about. It's nothing, especially weighed against the work of the revolution. 

* * *

As if she would let him go to Neverwinter without her. She absolutely wants to be there when he wins the showcase. Besides, they never got a honeymoon, and this is their chance to see the big city together. Dad managed the shop for years on his own; he'll be fine for a couple of weeks. 

At least they have someone to cry with when they come back to the collapsed and empty town. 

They have to leave again in a hurry; Kalen’s men won't be far, and everyone knows what they look like.


	3. To the Moon and Back

They’ve fallen into adventuring without really talking about it. He has an axe, she has a hammer. They fought well together in the revolution, and they still fight well together, even if they're more reckless now. It would be alright if they died together, out on the road somewhere. 

There’s a job for three, and already two signed up; they'll just split their share. You hire Magnus, you get Julia. You hire Julia, you get Magnus. That's just how it is. Never hurts to have an extra fighter to protect a wizard and a cleric.

* * *

“There's really only enough seats for four in this thing,” says Killian. 

“I'll sit on Magnus’ lap, if y'all don't mind.”

The elf shrugs; the dwarf winks. 

* * *

Well, that explains a lot, they both think. Maybe not everything, but enough. 

* * *

Lucretia didn't expect to feel so relieved to see Julia. The boys, of course, her hundred-year companions, she's immeasurably grateful to see them again. But Julia! The last ten years haven't had very many  _ welcome _ surprises, finally this is one. 

Jules’ hair is cropped short and Magnus’ is shaggy. She and Magnus both have scars after almost a decade of fighting at home and on the road. But they’re alive and here, and gods if only she could embrace them both now.

Instead, she clears her throat and welcomes them, all four of them, to the Bureau.

* * *

It's been years since they've had a regular place to lay their heads at night. It's nice to know where you're going to sleep and when you're going to eat, to be somewhere clean and orderly. 

The Bureau doesn't seem to get a lot of married couples, though; it took some finagling to get them their own room, and it's still bunk beds. At least she doesn't have to room with Taako and Merle. 

They still spend most of their free time with them, though: they bonded, she thinks, huddled in that well as the world vanished into fire above them. And Magnus in particular seems to jump instantly into goofing off with Taako and Merle, the three of them going for more and more ridiculous jokes and pranks. 

“I like ‘em,” is all he says. “Good company.”

* * *

Magnus starts stripping right there, if they've only got five minutes, why wait to change? Julia looks at the Director and silently mouths, “I'm sorry.”

Lucretia smiles faintly with the slightest shrug of her shoulders. Not that she can say so, of course, but she's witnessed this exact thing so many times before. She hopes Julia senses how fond she is of them. 

* * *

“What are your _real_ names?” asks Angus McDonald, the fancy boy on the train. 

Magnus and Julia grab for the kid's book simultaneously, and loudly bonk foreheads. As she's rubbing her head, he tries again and manages to snatch it away. She tries to stare down the kid as Magnus tosses it to Taako, so they can figure out what's going on. The rapidly forming bruise above her eyebrow probably doesn't help, though. 

* * *

They give each other a little nod after they duck into the sleeping car and both spy the two chairs. He picks up one and slams the crab towards her; she picks up the other and as she’s about to smash it right back, she spies the dwarf woman: Jess, who somehow, has an axe appearing in her hand? Which is definitely not what’s supposed to happen, but might as well knock the crab into the axe.

With the fragments of chair around them, she and Magnus give each other a high five. That feels  _ good _ . That feels like the old days.

* * *

“Good luck, kid,” she says. “Don’t get into too much trouble.” And that's the last they see of Angus before heading back to the BoB.

* * *

As the moon covers the sun, the cacophony starts and Julia slips instantly out of consciousness. It is, frankly, terrifying. 

The first thing she sees when she wakes is Magnus. Which: he's okay. Somehow, didn't pass out? It's the very first thing that makes her consider that there's something different between them. 

But also: he's slapping the Director awake? Which is like her Mags, just jump in and get things done, it's how they work so well together. That's not what startles her. This does: the Director slaps him back, and says “Booya.” And there's something there, maybe she's just still groggy, but there's definitely something in her expression that's  _ more _ . Julia files that thought away for later. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was listening to the episode where Angus confronts the boys, and decided to roll to see if Julia could snatch the book on the roll that Magnus failed (he had to roll twice)...she got a critical fail. I just went with it.


	4. The Nature of Want

The two of them, atop the battlewagon, and it’s going faster than anything she’s ever seen, let alone been on. She looks at him in his bear mask, from behind the eyes of her badger mask, and of course their faces are fully covered, but she knows. She knows he’s grinning just as big as she is. She laughs, and he laughs too, and for a moment there is nothing else in all the universe but this race.

For months afterwards, when she’s exhausted and terrified and confused, she looks back on this, on them, on the way they’re laughing together just like Sloane and Hurley do. It gives her a little boost of strength.

“Don’t let this happen again,” says Sloane, and that’s what Julia whispers to herself when the voices of the relics are too much to stand.

* * *

Captain Bane’s body is laying on the floor, his skin the same awful color as Hurley’s. He was going to kill us, thinks Julia. He was going to kill us for  _ that _ , that plain-looking belt. She thanks all the gods that Merle has it, that she can’t see it, although if she closes her eyes she can almost hear something…

While she’s lost in thought, Magnus is flailing at the spectre floating before them. Its unearthly voice pulls her out of her reverie.

“Are you afraid?”

It repeats this question, several times, and the guys are joking, but Julia is trembling and her hands on her hammer are cold. 

“You do not know how to be afraid.”

Then it pauses, and a hand made of red crackling energy points…at her.

“ _ You _ know how to be afraid, don’t you?”

They’re still goofing too much to even notice her. The red robe turns its attention back to the guys, or at least that’s how it seems to her, as if there’s something about her specifically that’s beneath its notice, outside of its attention. 

It repeats the names of all those lost to the thrall, shows their faces in its hand.

“This is the true nature of man. The want, the hunger, it consumes everything it touches, it can’t be stopped or changed. It’s the end of everything. This is your first lesson.”

And then it’s gone. Is this  _ her _ nature? Is she doomed as well?  _ It’s the end of everything. _ The words echo in her head all the way back to the base, and even as people are cheering around them and clapping them on the back as they emerge from the glass ball.

* * *

No, no hugs, even if she's overwhelmed with regret and grief. Another death on her account, even if Barry — gods, Barry! — was the hand that killed Bane. But when Magnus and Julia, together, of course, always the same mind, when they moved to hug her, well, that would not do. Maybe someday, not now.

* * *

“You're going to give her a gift certificate for a backrub?”

“Just seems like she's got a lot of stress, you know?”

Julia chortles. Actually, being up here seems to be good for her. She's unwinding a little, maybe. For sure she's stopped having nightmares about the Roost. 

“I know you, Magnus Burnsides,” she says. “You've got a little crush on the Director.”

“I guess? Is that weird? Do you mind?”

“Hey you're the one pining for your boss. Who, uh, we don't even know her name? So it's not like I have anything to worry about.”

“What are you getting her for Candlenights?”

Julia flushes. 

“I can't decide.”

“Wait,  _ who _ has a crush on Madame Director?”

* * *

“What about me? Is there a Julia Burnsides in there?” 

The debonair figure flips through his book again, then shakes his head. 

“Lucky for you, no. So I guess just stand back and let me take care of this.”

Julia and Magnus exchange confused looks. Then Julia hefts her hammer. 

“I don't think so,” she says, standing shoulder to shoulder with her husband and their friends.

* * *

“How are you holding up?” asks the Director as she pours a cup of tea. 

“The relics are…” She doesn't know how to talk about how she feels when they find them. Magnus eating the Philosopher's Stone, and some corner of her mind wanting to split him open with his own axe to get at it. To use it, although she has no idea what she'd do with it. “They're bad news.”

Lucretia examines Julia's face, the tight set of her mouth, the twitch at the corner of one eye. It can't be good for her to keep getting exposed to the relics. She doesn't have their resistance. But if Lucretia were to suggest that Julia become a regulator, if she were to separate her from Magnus, would that be worse somehow? Would Julia even agree to it? 

She puts her hand on Julia's. The Director’s hand is warm and comforting.

“Please, tell me if there's anything I can do.”

Julia sits a little straighter and squares her shoulders. She has to believe that she's got this.

* * *

“I think I need to get better at fighting from a distance, and that crossbow, it's pretty badass.”

“Alright, sounds good to me, but….”

“What is it?”

Killian looked a little abashed, a blush tinging her green skin.

“You used to be a blacksmith, yeah?”

A lifetime ago, she thinks.

“Yeah.”

“You ever make jewelry?”

“It’s kind of a different skill, but it was a bit of a hobby.”

“Would you teach me? I wanna learn how to...um...make a ring?”

Julia laughs uproariously.

“You been scoping out my husband’s jewelry?”

Killian grins.

“Maybe a little bit.”

* * *

“How’s your sneaking?”

“I stole some pudding today!”

“Niiiiiice.”

He pauses rubbing her hands to examine a fresh tiny burn mark.

“Hon, are you wearing your gloves?”

She sighs.

“But they’re so bulky when I’m working with something small.”

“Wait, you’re making something small. Out of metal. With Killian.”

“Uh-huh. And what are you and Carey working on?”

They both grin, and get to plotting.


	5. Twists of Fate

The feeling of dying and coming back to life isn't at all familiar. Julia throws up on the red clay outside of Refuge. 

* * *

They all walk into the temple together, but after passing over the threshold, Julia is alone. Not alone. A woman sits quietly knitting, her fingers a blur over the ever-growing million-colored scarf. Not a woman. A goddess looks up from her knitting, and she smiles.

“Julia.”

Julia bites her lip and glances around the rebuilt temple. She can tell it was made with love and skill, that the people who built it gave their craft to this...this goddess, sitting here in front of her. This goddess who knows her name.

“Lady Istus? Where are…?”

“They’re safe, and Julia, they’re so special. It’s going to be amazing.” The goddess’ eyes are welled up with tears, and the smile on her face is fond and distant at the same time. But then she focuses on Julia again.

“You’re very brave, dear, to stick with this. You need to trust…” She pauses. “But I don’t need to tell you that. You trust him so much already or you wouldn’t be here.”

Julia nods, unsure of her voice in front of a deity.

“I don’t have a gift for you, but I want to tell you that I’m very proud of you. You’re helping to do my work in this world, as hard as it is, and as terrible as fate feels sometimes, it is going to make this future right.”

The goddess fades, and the temple explodes, and when Julia awakens again, Magnus is holding a spear that looks oddly like part of a clock.

* * *

She looks into the sheriff's eyes as the others are mocking him. She knows that feeling, she thinks. This is the fifth of those awful things, and every time she gets near one, it's like every thought in her head is replaced with want, sheer unabated longing. Every time, it hurts to see the relic go out of her sight, like having skin peeled off of her body. 

And the guys joke about it, even Mags, and she can't help but doubt if she was even supposed to be here.  

* * *

“Huh,” says the chalice in the shape of a girl, “you don't have quite so much…missing as the boys.” It's the third time some weird entity has singled her out versus her husband and the other two reclaimers. “But funny enough, I think y'all are lookin’ at much the same choice. Come take a look.”

At the table, after, Taako and Merle blithely dismiss their offers. Magnus shakes his head, too, although with a familiar expression of grief. 

She swallow heavily. 

“I can't give this up,” says Julia. 

“Jules.”

“Mags, it's… Everyone I ever knew. It's my home. It's…Dad.”

“Jules, honey.”

She can tell, distantly, that she's crying, but all she feels is the pounding of her heart. 

“I can't lose you,” he whispers. “It would kill me.”

She closes her eyes and she sees her father's face, sees him waving goodbye. She opens her eyes and it's Magnus, and she supposes that's the choice, really. And what choice is that? 

* * *

“Jules, Julia, Jules, honey, sweetie, c’mon, wake up, Jules, talk to me.”

She's screaming for her daddy. Everything is on fire, the pillars are collapsing, and she can't find her father. Then she's awake and Magnus has his arms around her and she's shaking.

“I should've taken it. I could've saved ‘em all. Why didn't I take it?”

“Jules, honey, don't say that. You did the right thing.”

She rolls over and turns away from him. 

* * *

She drags through days of training; the Director has them going harder than ever and she stands in the balcony watching. Her judgment, whatever it is, is silent and constant. Julia’s hammer, the fancy one from the gachopon, feels heavier than ever. After they’re done for the day, she sits with her head in her hands, and Killian joins her. 

“What's eating you? Usually you just tear it up in there. But lately…”

“What if I'm not cut out for this, Kill?”

“Well, you are about the most badass fighter I know, no offense to your man. So I know it's not that.”

Julia sighs and Killian clicks her tongue. 

“Remember when we were in Phandalin? That gauntlet, I wanted it  _ so _ bad. And gods I was grateful when Taako just grabbed it like it was nothing.”

“Yeah. Why can they….” And she considers the Red Robe, the goddess, the little girl. She considers how the Director looks at the guys, and the Director looks at her. 

“There's no shame in it,” says Killian. “Team Sweet Flips can always use another member.”

* * *

He unrolls the scroll in front of her. 

“What am I looking at?” she asks. 

He has that lost look she recognizes from a decade of nightmares. 

“I don't know.”

“That's… That's you. In… In a…”

“Red robe.”

They both wince at the effort of trying to hold that thought. A headache fills the whole front of her head. 

“Jules, there's something really wrong here.”


	6. Secrets and Grief

Magnus is running up to the cannons, looking a bit nervous.

“So...Jules...I did something a bit, um, impulsive?”

“Of course.” She smiles; doing impulsive things is what they both do best, really. But he shakes his head: oh, this might be serious.

“Just know...well...uh...I was trying to do the right thing. And I love you, and we’ll be back soon.”

She throws her arms around him and kisses his cheek.

“Of course, hon. I love you too.”

 

* * *

Julia spots Angus eating lunch alone, his nose deep in a book: not reading, but writing.

“Hey kiddo, mind if I join you?”

He looks down at his notes with a little frown, before using the pencil as a bookmark and closing the book.

“Of course I don’t mind ma’am. It’s good to have lunch with friends!”

She sits and starts to eat while she tries to figure out what she wants to say. She can tell he’s worrying at something; he keeps glancing at the Director eating alone at the far end of the room. 

“I see you didn’t go with the other reclaimers to Wonderland,” he says.

“I’m going to be a regulator now with Killian and Carey and No-3113.”

He nods sagely, and she’s pretty sure she can see little wheels turning in his head.

“Ango, you’re pretty good at figuring stuff out...what if I asked you to help me with a mystery?”

“Is it about…” he looks at the Director again “...the relics?”

She finds her eyes drawn there as well. The Director has her chin in her hand, her plate of food barely touched, and she’s staring off out of the window.

“Maybe. Something happened to Magnus. Down in Refuge.”

Angus is nodding vigorously.

“I knew something happened!” He looked around, then dropped his voice to a whisper. “You and Mr. Magnus have been so quiet, which frankly, it’s not very like you. You’ve looked sad, ma’am, not to pry, and Mr. Magnus looked worried, and now you’re not going… So what is it?”

“I can’t tell you, kiddo.” Angus frowns. “No I mean I  _ can’t _ tell you. It’s like — he showed me this scroll, and I could see it, but —” She shakes her head in frustration and irritation. He opens his notebook again and writes something down. “I think the Director knows something that she’s not telling us.”

“So do I,” says Angus, “and I’m certain it has something to do with the relics.”

“And there’s something else,” she says. “Something the voidfish...told? Magnus? But I don’t want to talk about it here.”

“Yes ma’am.”

* * *

She has to keep it together. She wants to collapse, like Carey right now, weeping in someone’s arms, and maybe she’s jealous that Carey has someone right now, but Angus is with the Director, and he’s depending on her, and she has to see this through, Mags: well, there’ll be time to grieve later. He’d understand.

Merle and Taako both look at her sheepishly, nervously, and she wonders what exactly went wrong, but again, that’s for later. For now, stick with Davenport and the iron ball, once the mannikin drops in the Animus Bell; Taako seems even more cagey than usual about the mannikin, but that isn’t important now either. Focus: these innocuous-looking objects, like this little brass bell, and also the sources of such horror.

And Angus thinks that the Director isn’t destroying them, an idea so terrifying she almost laughed when he said it. But they both know something is wrong, something with the relics, something with the scroll June gave to Magnus, something with a  _ baby voidfish _ ; they have these puzzle pieces that don’t quite make a picture.

When the ball comes back from supposed destruction, their eyes meet. The little boy’s face is stern — too stern for a child — and they exchange a barely visible nod.

* * *

Grief. There is no time for grief now, no time to feel the enormity of this loss. There is only the work that must be done. It is the only thing she can think of to honor Magnus: to protect, as he always strove to protect. She has to do this for Julia, at least, to save this world that is the only one Julia will ever know.

She glances at Julia, whose face is stony, expressionless. There must be grief there, too, but she can’t read it, she doesn’t know what to look for. (For not the first time, she feels her own guilt and grief at not being there for them when Raven’s Roost fell.)

She turns away from Julia to greet Taako and Merle, to get through this, one more thing before she can finish the plan. Soon she’ll be done, soon she can grieve. 

* * *

For a second, she smirks at the sight of Merle and Taako writhing on the floor, but Angus gives her that too-stern-for-a-little-boy look, and she has the good grace to feel abashed. Then they come to: first Taako, as usual sharper than he looks, then Merle, rubbing his head sheepishly. 

“Start talking,” says Angus. “I need to know what you know. First off: what really happened to Magnus?”

He’s alive. Magnus is alive, and she’s gulping for air and her face is wet. Merle pats her leg and she grips his hand, hard.

Angus and Taako are talking, after Barry (who was also dead and is now alive) spills out of Taako’s bag, and at least Angus can tell them everything that she knows. Which, it turns out, is everything that they know, except for this new wrinkle (this whole Barry Bluejeans situation), because Magnus finally told them. Good for him, he should’ve trusted them earlier. Not that she says anything, because she can’t think of anything else, except: he’s alive. He’s getting a new body? And now, now they can find out what’s really going on.


	7. Light

She doesn't have as much to remember as the others, but she remembers this:

The summer before the war, falling in love with Magnus for the first time. How can she have forgotten how he looked at her when she slammed his arm to the table? And falling in love with Lucretia. Young, pretty, solemn Lucy. How could she have forgotten Lucretia’s smile? Falling in love with how they were in love with each other. How at first it was sex, something fun and secret. They were secretive, she could always tell there were things they weren't telling her, they looked maybe younger than her but seemed older. 

Still, it was all a grand adventure. And by degrees she fell for them, together and separately. Then the wars started. They came less often and they looked anxious, all the time they were with her they were also elsewhere. Magnus’ eyes grew haunted. Lucretia's smile was thin. They kept telling her that it wasn't her, they still loved her. 

And then they stopped. 

And then she forgot. 

* * *

He’s pointing a sword at Lucretia. Taako’s counting down from ten. Lucretia’s stuttering through an explanation. She’s looking into her husband’s eyes and realizing that she knows nothing.

“Magnus, I don't understand, you loved her. We loved her. What happened? What are you?”

* * *

They’re together when the blue light and the green flood the voidfish’s chamber. 

She sees Magnus on another world. His world. She sees his universe swallowed. She sees him die. He dies so many times. And he tries to save so many people, across so many universes, he’s tender and strong and brave.

She sees Lucretia on those same worlds; she wishes she could have met that shy girl. She sees her playing with Magnus and the voidfish, how was it so small? How were they so young? She sees her on the run, alone, fleeing the judges, and she wishes she could have been there, could’ve swung a hammer and fought off marauders for her.

A hundred years in a moment, and when the light clears, she’s looking at her husband and now she knows him, and he’s the man she fell in love with. And somehow, they’ll make this right.

* * *

A vortex of white light opens up in front of her and begins dragging her forward. Really, it's an inopportune moment: she's getting the hang of smashing these shadow creatures into smithereens, and it's kinda fun. But summoning is summoning, and she's being pulled through the white light into…. 

A bit of a horror show. The  _ inside _ of the Hunger? Everything is dark shot through with unearthly color, and wow? That's a big fucking monster, but with a dude's face? 

But Magnus is grinning and he gives that dumb shy wave he has sometimes. 

“Hey hon, Magnus sweetie, what am I doing here?”

“Can you give that thing a whack?”

“This that John character I've heard so much about?”

“Sort of?”

Taako adds, “More or less.” 

Merle shrugs, and says, “Close enough.”

“Yeah, I’d like that. I'll see if I can soften him up a little for y'all.” She steps forward and swings her hammer. It hits like a thunderclap, stronger than any time she's used it before. Feels good. 

“I'll see you soon?” she asks, as the white threads start to pull her back. 

“Yes, absolutely, soon,” says Magnus. “I love you, Jules.”

She blows him a kiss. Then out of the corner of her eye, she spots Lucretia, still working that magic. Julia winks and blows another kiss. 

The last thing she hears is Merle: “Well I'll be darned.”


	8. A Finish Line

He's waiting for her at the gate with tickets, and of course a dog in a little vest emblazoned with the Hammer and Tails emblem. 

“Big events are great for training,” he says. 

“Of course they are.”

He takes her arm and leads her through the crowd to their seats at the very front of the bleachers. People part around them, though whether it's the “service dog in training”, Magnus’ sheer size, or both of their notoriety, she can't tell. 

“We're all so glad you could make it to the finals,” he says as they settle into their spot. 

“ _ All _ ?”

“Well, ok, maybe Cap’nport didn't say too much. But Julia….”

Just as he says her name, Lucretia spies the woman herself waving wildly at them from down on the track. She waves back. Julia pulls down her badger mask and climbs into the battlewagon. Lucretia can just barely spot the gnome beside Julia, also in a badger mask: the two bump fists as Julia straps herself in.

Then the horn blares, and the wagons leap forward, and Magnus and Lucretia lean forward together. Somehow, without any discussion, their hands are intertwined, gripping each other in the excitement. He leans forward and whispers to her about all the work the three of them did together on the battlewagon: a vehicle that had the sleek lines of the old Starblaster, and that seemed to move nearly as fast.

As Davenport weaves among the other racers, Julia climbs out onto the roof, and this is too reminiscent of the last time she saw Julia like this, only now she can taste the dust and the roaring fills her ears. She glances at Magnus: he’s grinning, nodding, cheering on his old captain and his wife as they evade and smash their competitors, together. 

What a strange team, she thinks: a partnership she could never have planned. So many things in this future, she’d spent so much time planning and what happened was better and stronger than any of it.

She grips his hand again, and they almost miss seeing the Badgers streak across the line, because he looks down at her, and he’s smiling, and it’s fond, fonder than she deserves.

* * *

Julia looks out from the dais, where she and Dav are being bombarded with confetti, trying to catch a glimpse of them. They’re in the crowd, she can see them, Magnus towering above Lucretia, and the trainee dog between them. Without a second’s hesitation, even as the dryads are getting ready to put a medal around her neck, she jumps down, hammer still in hand, and runs towards them.

“We won!” she shouts as they embrace her. Magnus grins and squeezes her tight, while that smile slowly spreads across Lucretia’s face. “Yes,” they say, almost in unison. “We won.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So [I asked blue-mood-blue on Tumblr for some headcanons](http://blue-mood-blue.tumblr.com/post/164737329977/headcanons-taz-characters-of-your-choice-5), and one of them perfectly fit with an idea I was already considering for this chapter. Thanks for the gift of Davenport, battlewagon champion!

**Author's Note:**

> This whole thing owes an enormous debt to [an old sad song (you heard it all before)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10828953) and [Up the Revolution](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11110773), both of which hugely influenced my view of Julia.


End file.
